Now back home, Kathy Griffin experienced coronavirus-esque symptoms but clinicians were unable to offer her a test, she claimed. (Twitter)
Kathy Griffin might have been exposed to the coronavirus. Or she might not have.
The comic was not tested.
Griffin revealed in a tweet Thursday that she checked into a hospital after experiencing “unbearably painful” symptoms, but clinicians were unable to test her due to current Centre for Disease Control guidelines.
The 59-year-old explained to the Los Angeles Times that she is now at home self-isolating.
She also upbraided US president Donald Trump who boasted online that the country has “done far more ‘testing’ than any other nation”, despite analysts saying this is in no way near the reality of the administration’s approach to the pandemic.
He’s lying. I was sent to the #COVID19 isolation ward room in a major hospital ER from a separate urgent care facility after showing UNBEARABLY PAINFUL symptoms. The hospital couldn’t test me for #coronavirus because of CDC (Pence task force) restrictions. #TESTTESTTEST https://t.co/18fRiOBsdN pic.twitter.com/0sU9fHu4r0
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) March 25, 2020
What happened to Kathy Griffin?
“He’s lying,” Griffin wrote, cutting into Trump’s claims.
“I was sent to the COVID-19 isolation wardroom in a major hospital ER from a separate urgent care facility.
“The hospital [Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, California] couldn’t test me for coronavirus because of CDC (Pence task force) restrictions,” she wrote, before tagging “#TestTestTest.”
On Saturday, Griffin started having what husband Randy Bick called “mild stomach issues”. They receded, but two days later, “she woke up very early in the morning and had incredibly intense pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, every 20 minutes,” he said to the paper.
“Just really sick.”
“The vomiting felt like a convulsion,” Griffin added.
“We were both nervous because we were still in the incubation period after returning from Mexico, but also we had not left the house in days,” Griffin said.
“We’d been hearing about a 14-day incubation period [for the coronavirus]. So for me to get what felt like food poisoning after six days, I thought, OK, is this a coincidence or what?”
She was sent to a specific COVID-19-designated area of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s emergency room.
‘I just think it’s so obvious that those tests have to be accessible to everybody.’
Griffin detailed the hospital set-up, one where the differences in protective gear staffers had one astounded her.
She claimed one doctor had a plastic, visor-style face mask, and some didn’t have masks at all.
After a chest x-ray, Griffin said, an urgent-care doctor said she should get tested and an ED doctor wanted to test both her and her husband but could not.
“The doctor was going through the boxes and going through the boxes [on a form] and she kept saying, like, ‘Ugh, because of the lungs, the fever and the kind of cough, you don’t meet the CDC requirements’,” Griffin said.
Given the choice to admit to hospital or quarantine at home, she opted for the latter.
“I just think it’s so obvious that those tests have to be accessible to everybody,” Griffin said
“A lot of people, when they hear the president saying everyone who needs a test should get one, then shouldn’t have to then go to a hospital where, frankly, they may be exposing themselves or exposing others.
“Hopefully sooner than later you can either go to a pharmacy and get one or they could deliver one at home, something like that.”
Is what Donald Trump claimed true?
Trump claimed that the nation had conducted more tests than South Korea.
Analysts say that the US, indeed, has overtaken South Korea in total numbers of tests administered, but, they stress, not per person.
Around one in 142 South Koreans and one in every 786 Americans have been tested for the coronavirus, according to available data and the population of each country.
It comes as scientists warned that the US may become the epicentre of the viral outbreak, a day that arrived Thursday.
At least 81,321 people are known to have been infected with the coronavirus, including more than 1,000 deaths — more cases than China, Italy or any other country has seen, based on data gathered by the New York Times.